


Hear No Evil

by AnonymousPumpkin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Background Original Characters - Freeform, Blood, Deaf Character, Emotional Constipation, Followed by Not Quite As Platonic Bed Sharing, Gen, Husktop Haunting, Kurloz creeping Kankri out without even being in the story once, On hiatus while I finish my original novel, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Platonic bed sharing, Vomit, semi canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-06-04 05:43:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6643696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousPumpkin/pseuds/AnonymousPumpkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were only three things that could possibly be outside his door right now. The first was someone had come again to try and cull him. The second was one of his friends come to visit. The third possibility was that it was a salesman of some kind, and Kankri was not so polite that he would greet one of those. So he ignored the insistent and loud knocking (which stopped after only a few attempts) and went back to his very important work.</p><p>It was not until he noticed that thick green liquid had begun to leak under his door that he leapt to open it.</p><p>A mess of headcanons thrown together until they formed a basic plot that made sense and shit. A canon-compliant interpretation of events twisted until they fit headcanon. Features sign language, lots and lots of tea, platonic bed-sharing, unrequited pale pining, requited pale pining, way less blood than Kankri makes it seem, and one more deaf character than you were expecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to my latest project, one in a long line of historically unfinished and aborted projects. This particular little story is, if everything goes to plan, a flashback/set-up story to be incorporated into a much larger work I have planned (although you know what they say about best laid plans), which would focus on the Alpha Trolls, and Kankri specifically. If said much larger work goes pear-shaped, however, this can certainly stand on its own as me flexing my impressive and well-developed headcanon muscles. I still have a whole bunch of these little works planned (again, best laid plans), which are not quite as Kankri-centric as the planned larger story, because damn do I have so many headcanons for the Alpha Trolls. Just. So damn many.
> 
> A list of headcanons that are featured in this story will be listed at the end of the story, to avoid giving spoilers. By that point, I figure they should be obvious.

Kankri didn’t notice the knocking at first. He was far too absorbed in this movie review, which, though it aligned with his own opinions perfectly, was just obnoxious and borderline offensive enough to make him cringe with equal distaste and sharp nostalgia. The reviewer spoke so loud and nasally that he didn’t even need his special headphones or closed captioning to hear them. They presented several very good points on the hackneyed romantic subplots, which would’ve been perfectly presentable had they been given their own film or even a decent amount of screentime, but ended up just feeling forced and awkward when forced to fill the gaps in between the gripping twists and turns of the main plot, which gave absolutely no explanation as to why the protagonist flipped from pale to black at the last minute. He would have to remember their precise phrasing later, to adapt and use the next time someone tried to tell him that the pairing of Huntir and Karris at the end made any sense at all.

When faced with such gripping and important information, he could hardly be blamed for ignoring the door.

The first few knocks were so soft that he thought they were just mistimed beats in the shitty jingle playing in the background of the video, and paid them about as much mind as he felt they deserved. The next few were louder, loud enough that he wondered if there was an animal messing around on his window or if there was a grub that had just moved in nearby. The final knock, the one that got his attention, was so loud that he felt the vibrations in his feet. Annoyance was his foremost emotion, and he responded as was typical. He reached into his modus for a rock to throw at the door, and ended up sending a wad of bandages sailing doorward. Stupid chastity modus.

He made no move to get up and get the door. It was highly unlikely that it was anyone come to visit. No one ever just came to _visit_ Kankri, and this was not, as some in his social circle assumed, something he mourned. He had recently come to value his solitude, or more accurately, to value his own company as compared to that of others.

That said, there were only three explanations for who could possibly be outside his door right now. The first was that someone had come again to try and cull him; if that were the case, however, they would not have knocked unless they were excessively polite. The second was that one of his friends had come to socialize; but they would not have come without leaving a message first, and the one person who would not have was the last person he wanted to see. So that wasn’t it. The third, and now only, possibility was that it was a salesman of some kind, and Kankri was not so polite that he would greet one of _those_. So he ignored the insistent and loud knocking (which faded after only three attempts) and went back to his very important business. The review was just starting to touch on the brilliant use of background visual cues, rather than subtle audio, to lead the viewer to make the wrong conclusions about the killer, which Kankri personally appreciated.

It was not until he noticed that thick green liquid had begun to leak under his door that he leapt to open it.

As is evident by the musing recorded above, Kankri did not expect to find Meulin Leijon on his lawnring, passed out and bleeding profusely from a wound he could not see.

Panic spurned Kankri into action before his mind even had a chance to catch up to what he was seeing. He was by Meulin’s side in an instant, turning her over carefully with the tips of his fingers. The blood had pooled beneath her head and shoulders (and his _shoes_ ), and her eyes were squeezed shut. He felt a wave of nausea hit him and he forced his eyes to remain on her face…not, not her face. Her cheeks were streaked with green. Her throat? No good. Blood pooled around her neck and jaw. Her horns. Those were safe. He stared at her horns, looking at the rest of her with his peripheral vision. She was either unconscious or very soon to be, because she made absolutely no move to assist or hinder him as he shifted her into a more comfortable position with the tips of his fingers. Her mewling sobs stopped him moving her around too much, but he could see now that her throat, at least, was not the source of the blood. He attempted to speak to her, shaking her shoulders once he ascertained they were likewise uninjured. He touched her very roughly, poking her hard before his hand darted back to his side.

“Meulin, what has happened?” His voice sounded high and terrified, even to him. He cleared his throat, which actually only made it worse. “Can you hear me? Why are you here?”

He looked up and around, aware that his breath was getting more than a little ragged, searching for a wild head of black hair and an explanation. Where Meulin was, Kurloz was usually not far behind. Their matespritship was bordering on obnoxious with how openly affectionate and attached they had become. But he saw no sign of the talkative highblood, and was forced to stop looking around when the motion, combined with the smell of blood, began to make his head spin.

Someone was _bleeding_ on his _lawnring_.

His nerves were going to make him next to useless pretty soon. Meulin could also potentially bleed to death soon. The thought of all that _blood_ …how much blood could a troll lose before they died? More than enough to render him useless. He gathered her up before that can happen, or before someone could come along and see her and decide to cull her. Or worse, put her out of her misery. He was just isolated enough that wild animals were a danger as well. It was one of the many reasons he avoided bleeding outside.

Carrying Meulin was not easy. She was taller than him, and burlier than him, and heavier than he’d thought. He tried to hold her at a distance at first, but the weight put him dangerously off balance and he was forced to hold his breath, look up, and hold her to his chest. He tried to ignore the feeling of her wet clothes, telling himself that it was just…rain. Yeah. It was raining outside. Rain that wasn’t acid, like most rain, but just like…really hot water. Yeah. Hot water rain. That’s what was soaking through her sweater and his pants.

This was easy. This was fine. As long as he just didn’t look down and pretended he was carrying…tubers. _Yeah_. A really big, oddly troll-shaped bag of tubers. A bag of tubers that was leaking some kind of…weird _honey_.

His eyes remained on the ceiling and Kankri forced his breath to calm down.

 Okay, first things first…he had to troll Porrim. It was the middle of the night, but she would never ignore him. She had a special notification sound just for him. She would know what to do. He lurched for his husktop.

He was halfway across the room before he realized he was doing _too good_ a job pretending. Meulin let out a soft whimper and he stopped short, remembering with a sinking feeling that she was there.

 _Crap_. He couldn’t take Meulin to his damn husktop. That was utterly useless.

Ablutionblock. Right. That was the way to go.

He tried to walk very slowly and carefully so he didn’t jostle the, erm… _tubers_ around too much. He wouldn’t want to hurt them. Not the tubers. Nope.

He settled for shouting across the room as he walks away.

“PORRIM!” Meulin flinched in his arms, but this was not the time for her to be startled. She was _dying_ for goodness’s sake, and she needed to pipe down and let him help her. “PORRIM, COME HERE! MEULIN’S BLEEDING! I NEED YOUR HELP! IMMEDIATELY!”

Thank goodness he had thought to install that voice-to-text chat feature. It was not just useful, it seemed, for maintaining arguments while he did mundane things like eat and clean. He heard the obnoxious klaxon of Trollian’s message notification, but he couldn’t check her reply. She would have to figure everything out on the way over. He had a bag of tubers to clean of suspiciously-blood-like honey.

This was an instance in which Kankri’s obsessive cleanliness was a blessing. (One of many.) He didn’t trip or run into anything, despite the fact that he was walking with his head thrown almost all the way back and thus had almost no idea what was in front of him. Through muscle memory he made his way to his ablutionblock.

Far too quickly, Kankri’s feet hit the edge of his ablutiontrap. He very carefully angled his head away and lowered his burden into the trap. When it was firmly settled and his breathing had become somewhat regular, he forced himself to look down.

It was not, in fact, a bag of tubers, and it was very much leaking blood. Now that he looked, he could see that it wasn’t nearly as much as he’d first thought, but it was definitely coming from her ears. The ones on the side of her head. He looked a little bit further down and noticed something in the bottom of his vision. He reached up carefully and touched his collar. His fingers came away green.

When Porrim finally decided to grace his hive with her presence, she found him in the middle of emptying his digestion sac into the load gaper. He didn’t have to look up to know her expression. Her eyebrow was raised just a little bit and she was smiling, but not like a real smile. The kind of smile that meant she wanted to smack him but was playing nice because there were people around. Even unconscious people counted, apparently.

“That was profoundly unhelpful, Kanny. Not to mention riddled with misspellings. How unlike you.”

“I was in a hurry,” he managed to say. His tongue was burning, and he still had half of his lunch primed to escape.

“So I see. What happened?” She would wrinkle her nose when his answer came in the form of violent retching.

“No idea,” he struggled to admit. His vision was going black.

How she managed to be so darned calm in the face of all that blood was utterly beyond him. She swept past Kankri and knelt by the trap. He couldn’t see, but he heard the sound of the water being turned on.

 “What makes you think I know how to fix this?” Porrim asked as Kankri finally pulled himself up, stumbling to the mini-trap without turning his head once in their direction.

"I dunno. You know how to fix everything.” The last bit came out a bit garbled, and he winced. He _hated_ not being able to articulate. Stupid blood. Stupid digestion sac. Stupid.

He rinsed his mouth out until all he could taste was whatever deadly chemicals the Empire purified the water with. He grabbed a rag, passed one to Porrim when she held out her hand, and wiped away the olive blood from his collar. He patted at the top of his pants, but he knew they would stain and he would have to get rid of this pair. This was his most comfortable pair. He sighed and turned around.

Kankri’s squawk was loud and undignified, and Meulin moaned again. He was too busy covering his eyes to feel any kind of remorse. Porrim had decided, without warning or permission, to strip Meulin, and had left her clothes in a pile at the end of the ablutiontrap.

“ _Porrim_! Warn me next time you decide to—”

"Kankri.”

The tone of her voice stopped him instantly, but he frowned just to let her know that he was nowhere near done complaining.

“Come here and help me wipe her off.”

His face felt like it was on fire, but Porrim was using The Tone. He slowly lowered his hands from his face and walked, eyes down this time instead of up, and knelt on the other side of the ablutiontrap. He accepted the wet rag Porrim handed him, and dipped it into the water. He was looking up at the ceiling now, and he heard Porrim’s impatience as she told him,

"Wipe off her face.” Then, “I don’t see any cuts there. I think she’s done bleeding.”

He forced himself to look at her…and realized she wasn’t as grub-nude as he’d initially thought. Porrim had rather thoughtfully left her underclothes on, and they were not yet soaked with blood. Kankri found that made it a little bit easier to look at her, though his ears still burned if his eyes strayed to her exposed shoulders.

Porrim reached out and jerked his chin up, pulling her hand away before he could bite it. “Her face, Kanny,” she said firmly, shrugging off his glare.

That was good. Nice and easy. Focus on her face, Kankri. Her face.

He did focus on her face. The blood was the worst there, and he felt a bit queasy as he scrubbed. It was just honey. Just honey. The water was turning a thin shade of teal, and Kankri’s vision was swimming. Every now and then, Porrim would say something inconsequential, too quiet for him to actually hear, but loud enough to get his attention, and he would hone in on the sound of her voice while his eyes stayed glued to Meulin’s knitted brow. Porrim had given her something, he could smell it, but he wasn’t well-versed enough in medicinals to know what it was. There wasn’t any _more_ blood flowing, at least. It had already caked onto the side of her face, and he was extremely grateful that Meulin kept her hair short. It was easy to get it out. She still winced and flinched when he rubbed too hard or tugged on a knot, but she remained unconscious through the entire process.

As he delicately poked at one pointed ear, Kankri realized something. The blood had pooled inside and dripped over...

“Are…were her _ears_ bleeding?” The thought made his digestion sac flip again.

 He looked up at Porrim, whose lips had thinned. “It would appear that way. They’ve stopped for now, but…this could be serious, Kanny. What happened to her? _Really_?”

“I don’t know!” Porrim’s eyebrows raised at the whiny defensiveness of his tone, and he tried again, lower, growlier. More adult. “I don’t _know_ , Porrim. She showed up on my lawnring like this. Frankly, I am personally offended that you think I would lie about something like that. I found her like this.”

She pursed her lips. “Fine. I believe you.” She didn’t. “Where is Kurloz? What did he say?”

"He wasn’t there.”

Porrim looked exasperated now. “That’s a _problem_ , Kanny. Did you try and contact him?”

“No. As you can easily see, I was… _busy_. After I brought her inside.”

Porrim made a face, like she wanted to yell at him, but she didn’t. She just put her rag down, very carefully, folded up into a triangle on the edge of the ablutiontrap. How sickeningly neat.

"I’ll check Trollian. Perhaps Kurloz knows what happened. Or perhaps someone else saw. I can ask your neigh… Hm. Well. I can ask someone on the road.” Porrim started to rise, and without thinking, Kankri reached for her.

“Where are you going?” he demanded. “Don’t leave me with…!” _Don’t leave me with all this blood! Don’t leave me without giving me something to do! Don’t let me with her!_

Porrim’s face was near to venomous as she ordered, “Stay in here and make sure she doesn’t drown. And if she wakes up, _comfort_ her.” Something in her eyes said, _I will kill you if you don’t_ , and though he had no intentions of doing the latter, Kankri nodded obediently.

“Fine. Let me know if you find anything.” He looked down and poked at Meulin’s ear again, shifting her head so that water wouldn’t flow inside. He knew that _he_ hated that. He looked up again to see that Porrim’s face had softened ever so slightly.

“I will.” 

She picked up Meulin’s soiled clothes and captchalogued them without so much as a disdainful sniff, and left. He heard her go first into his launderingblock, and then to his desk. The faint click-clack of his well-used keyboard was the only sound for a long time.

And that just left the two of them. Kankri wiped the last bit of blood from Meulin’s face and laid his rag on the edge of the ablutiontrap, albeit more sloppily than Porrim had. He got up to rinse his hands off, and swayed when he walked. He left his hands under the water for several long minutes and even picked underneath his nails to get every little bit out. When the last bit of green was gone from his hands, Kankri breathed a little easier.

Now that he knew Meulin was not fatally injured, Kankri couldn’t help feeling a flare of irritation. Why _him_ of all trolls? She had to know he had that whole “nauseating aversion to blood” thing. And that whole “violent aversion to touch” thing. And also the “mildly irritating aversion to company” thing. That last one was pretty recent, but he’d made sure everyone knew that he had no desire to be around anyone right now. There were plenty of other trolls whose lawnrings she could’ve bled out on who would’ve been more than happy to receive the attention.

Remembering Porrim’s directive (that is, the one he had any intention of following), Kankri turned around to make sure Meulin hadn’t slipped and drowned.

He watched her for several long moments, having nothing else to do. As if sensing his scrutiny, she twitched and stirred, and opened her eyes. She blinked slowly, looking around with evident and growing confusion. She tried to sit up, but that clearly was too uncomfortable a concept, and she sank back down into the warm water. She looked dazed, which was likely due to the bloodloss and/or the trauma of whatever had caused her to lose said blood.

If he kept thinking along those lines, he would need another trip to the load gaper.

His irritation cooled a bit now that she was awake. She looked very pitiful, sitting there drenched and lost, and even his bloodpumper was not completely immune to such things. Given that, and the fact that she was no doubt more than a little bit shellshocked, he tried not to sound too harsh when he spoke.

“You’re awake. That’s a preferable turn of events.” Kankri didn’t move towards her, partly because it was probably impolite and partly because he really didn’t want to. “I apologize for your…state of undress. It was not my decision, and quite frankly, had I had my way, you would still be fully clothed. A bit more uncomfortable, perhaps, but certainly more appropriate and less traumatizing for all of us. Porrim has your clothes, and I assume she had gone to wash them, so I suppose you can sit in the trap until they’re done. That could be several hours, but given the…state you’re in, I think it would do you good.” He wrinkled his nose. “I understand that your hygienic habits are poor on the best of occasions, never mind when you’re bleeding all over someone else’s property. I suppose in this particular instance, I can forgive the mess, though I am very curious to know why you came to me of all trolls. The fact that I immediately called Porrim should give you some clue as to my competence in these matters. Biology is not my strong suit, be it my own or anyone else’s. There is a reason I never gravitated towards medical arts as a grub.”

She didn’t respond. She was just…sitting there. Blinking at the water. She raised her hands, watching the water pour between her fingers. Her brows knit together in confusion and her mouth hung open. She moved her lips as if to speak, but no words came out. Kankri’s irritation returned. Was she ignoring him? That was gratitude for you. He just saved her from bleeding to death on his lawnring and she didn’t even have the decency to listen when he spoke! He pushed himself up off the counter and took a step towards her.

“Meulin, are you ignoring me, because—”

As he moved, Meulin started, turning towards him suddenly as if she just realized he was there. Water splashed over the side of the trap, and before he could scold her for it, Kankri got a look of Meulin’s face, and his pusher basically stopped.

He’d never seen anyone look so… _lost_ before. Meulin looked as if her entire world had just turned upside down, and he was sure that wasn’t entirely due to the fact that she was in his ablutiontrap half-naked.

“Meulin?” Uncertain now, quieter, which only seems to distress her more.

“Kan…kri?”

Something was wrong. Her voice was wrong. It was too loud and uncertain, as if she were saying his name for the first time and didn’t quite know how to put the syllables together. One hand came up to cup her ear, and the fear on her face was overwhelming, even from here. She refused to drop her eyes from his face, darting back and forth between his eyes and his mouth.

“Kankri, I…” She broke off, voice rising and warbling in panic. Her eyes were huge and she began to pant, finally tearing her eyes away to look around and realize where she was. “What hap…what…”

“Meulin, you should be telling _me_ what happened. You’ve bled all over my lawnring and all over my hive and all over my _pants_ , because I had to _carry_ you here, and while I by no means hold any of these transgressions against you, I do feel that at the very least I deserve a simple answer for everything I’ve done.” He fought the urge to cross his arms over his chest, which was still damp with blood and water, and settled for folding his hands behind his back.

Her panic only seemed to grow as he spoke, until she was shaking so badly that water began to fall over the edge of the trap. She was mumbling to herself, incoherent and inaudible gibberish, and he wondered if she’d lost her mind.

“I can’t…” she finally managed to say, still too loud, too slurred. “I can’t… _hurts_ …can’t…” She kept saying the word, different each time, voice rising to a panicked trill.

Perhaps it was because of his own disability that Kankri realized so quickly. Her ears. Her blood. Her _voice_. His irritation simmered down as he connected the dots.

“Meulin…” he said slowly, while her eyes were roaming elsewhere. “Meulin, can you hear me?”

She didn’t respond. She didn’t even acknowledge him. He could’ve simply brushed it off as hysterics if she hadn’t frozen as soon as she looked back at him and realized his lips were moving.

“…can’t hear you…” she was muttering, eyes wide and panicked. “Can’t hear anything…”

She was getting more and more panicked by the second, and Kankri’s head was ringing with the sound of her sharp trills, unmoderated and shrill. His skin was crawling, as if her panic was physically assaulting him, but he managed to force his legs to move, lurching towards her in quite possibly the most undignified manner possible. He wasn’t sure quite what his plan was, but _anything_ to get her to stop making that noise. If she started crying, it would just be the grubsauce on top of this confectionary circle platform.

So it was with extreme care that Kankri crossed the room, hand outstretched. Before Meulin could think to pull away, it landed with vicious accuracy on top of her head. It was not quite a pap, and no one could possibly look at his face and misinterpret it as a pale come-on. His face was anything but pitying; he looked on the verge of panic himself. His irritation had given way to fear and, yes, a _small_ amount of pity. Honestly, who _wouldn’t_ feel pity right now. She was wet and lost and apparently deaf now as well. She looked sweeps younger, with her eyes wide and body drawn in on itself. She also seemed to finally have noticed the green-tinted water, and connected the dots.

Kankri continued awkwardly patting at the space between her horns, a bit rougher than he intended. Eventually he began to stroke her head, gentler. He remembered something he’d seen in a movie and tried to time the strokes with his own breathing.

“It’s alright,” he said slowly, though he knew she probably didn’t know to read his lips. She seemed to get the gist of what he was saying, though she continued to babble around her hiccups and half-sobs. He couldn’t understand more than a handful of words, but he gathered that _she_ was asking _him_ what had happened to her. He thought he heard Kurloz’s name a few times (she mangled it with puns and was speaking like her mouth was full of marbles, so it was hard to tell), and something about ice cream. She was completely useless.

_Where is Porrim???_

Long minutes passed and Meulin finally stopped crying, though she still looked lost and confused. Kankri took his hand away from her head, and resisted the urge to wipe it on his pants. Her hair was filthy. She turned to look at him and for a long while they just stared into each other’s eyes.

He wasn’t quite sure how to proceed now. He’d never really been in this kind of situation before. His friends didn’t usually come to him for assistance of _any_ kind, and he was unprepared, unequipped, and inexperienced when it came to such things. He was sure that Porrim could handle this, but Porrim was not here, and he actually was rather fond of Meulin and didn’t want to see her smothered in Porrim’s…good intentions.

After a comical and painful hour of charades and exaggerated pantomime, Kankri managed to get Meulin out of the ablutiontrap, wrapped in a towel, and sitting on one of the piles in his hive once she was dry. He tried to apologize, stating that he never had guests to entertain and so never invested in anything more comfortable than books and notepads, but realized that her back was to him. He doubted she would’ve been able to keep up anyway. He swapped out her towel for a blanket. Porrim was nowhere to be seen, so Kankri took on the task of brewing calming liquid infusions himself. It was mostly an excuse to do something with his hands, which were still shaking, and to avoid looking at Meulin too long, which made him feel a bit sick and also a bit lightheaded, for two totally different reasons.

This was calming, though. He looked over his shoulder at Meulin while he waited for the water to boil. She was curled up on his pile, knees pulled to her chest, staring blankly at the floor. Every now and then she’d started crying again, and then quickly shut herself up. It was simultaneously a relief and a pity to watch. He looked from her to his husktop, still open across the room. He could vaguely see Trollian open, and several chat windows up in various shades. He would check that later. When Meulin was calmed down.

The kettle whistled for several long moments before reaching a pitch that caught his attention, and Kankri poured two cups of tea. He hummed tunelessly to himself as he poured the proper amount of sugar into each and brought it to Meulin. She looked up at his approach and her face opened up, her gratitude magnified by the severity of her situation.

“Thank you,” she said, or attempted to say. He knew what she meant.

“Not at all,” he assured her.

For a few seconds, they just stood like that. Or, rather, he stood. She just sat and stared up at him. Eventually, the eye contact got to be a bit much, and Kankri turned away, crossing the room to look at his husktop. It looked like Porrim had attempted to contact Kurloz, to no avail, and had contacted two of her own acquaintances he’d never even heard of, and their conversations were esoteric and roundabout. She had left to fetch something, and would be back shortly, as an unsent message in an empty chat window informed him.

Take care o+f Meulin. I’ll be back sho+rtly. Left to+ fetch so+mething.

He sighed. Wasn’t that just lovely. It was almost day already, and he was tired, not just of this situation. If Meulin was going to get back to her own hive, she was going to have to leave soon and go quickly. He wasn’t even sure how she’d gotten here in her condition. Perhaps she had more stamina than he’d thought.

He looked over his shoulder. Meulin was sitting quietly, wrapped up in the blanket, holding the tea to her chest. She looked up at him and held his eyes for a few minutes. She smiled weakly and dipped her head, taking a sip of the tea and looking up at him with a question in her eyes. He nodded slowly, not sure exactly what he was approving of, but her face flushed, seemingly with joy, and she went back to her tea. He turned back around, feeling a bit strange.

With nothing better to do, he clicked through his few open chats, scrolled through some forums, and checked back on some arguments he’d gotten into earlier in the evening. He didn’t delve too deeply into anything, in case something happened while he was distracted, but he did start a few drafts in his head. He would be up half the day, he was sure, arguing with these fools. He turned around every now and then to check on Meulin, who was obediently sipping her tea and mostly just sitting there doing nothing. After a while, his digestion sac started to flutter, neither in the manner of “about to sick” nor “about to faint from hunger.” It was a not-unfamiliar but entirely unwelcome sensation, and one he knew he wouldn’t be able to fight for long.

Luckily, Porrim showed up before things got drastic.

Unluckily, she brought company.

He was halfway through his tea and it was just starting to work its magic soothing his frayed nerves when the door opened, casting moonlight across the floor. Porrim stepped through, looking immaculate despite the fact that she’d trekked through the woods surrounding his hive, and…what the heck.

“Who is this?” Kankri asked as soon as the massive stranger ducked into his hive, and was completely ignored. “Porrim, you said nothing about bringing back a _person_.”

“This is Arryss,” she introduced slowly. “She’s actually medically trained. And older than us.”

“Hello!” She was trying to be unintimidating, but it was hard when she was twice their height and built like a hoofbeast. She was olive like Meulin, but had none of Meulin’s softness. When she smiled, she revealed a mouthful of perfectly straight fangs, and he shuddered.

“Good night,” he greeted, and looked to Porrim. “Perhaps when this episode is over, you and I shall have a discussion about consent and personal boundaries. You seem to require a refresher on the basics.”

He wasn’t sure when he’d gravitated towards Meulin’s side, or when she’d started leaning towards him, no close enough to touch, but close enough to count. He was standing between her and the stranger, who was looking at them with what Kankri knew to be amusement. Porrim just looked back and forth between the two of them with one eyebrow raised in that obnoxious way she did. Kankri’s skin was crawling, and he struggled to keep his voice from rising like a wiggler’s. This was _his_ hive, darn it! Who did these people think they were just marching in here without his permission!

“I’m just here t-to help,” Arryss assured him, and it looked like she was trying not to laugh. Her lip curled in a way that made her look strained and unattractive, and her eyes glittered. “Porrim t-told me you found her bleeding from her ears. That-t’s bad. If it-t’s serious enough, she could die.” Her eyes travelled from his face to hers, and her mouth twisted. “I assume you don’t-t want-t that-t.”

Well…there wasn’t much he could say to that. That didn’t stop him from trying, though. He stepped aside half a step and allowed Arryss to step in. He complained loudly the entire time, alternating between being offended on his behalf and on Meulin’s. He filled what would’ve otherwise been tense and awkward silence with such gusto that even Porrim started to look annoyed by the time Arryss finished her work. Before he got to that, however, he informed her flat out,

“She can’t hear you.”

“What-t?” Arryss didn’t even look at him, but he could tell that her attention had shifted. She was kneeling down in front of Meulin, which unfortunately also placed her rather close to him. She was halfway through reaching towards Meulin’s ear, and he had to fight the urge to slap her hand away.

“You asked her how she was feeling,” he said, slowly as if talking to a wiggler, “but she can’t hear you. She’s deaf.”

“Oh.” Arryss’s face fell, looking genuinely guilty. She looked up at him now, and there was soft pity in her eyes. Purely platonic, he hoped. “I didn’t know, I’m sorry.”

“It’s perfectly understandable, as this is a new development. Very new, in fact. About-half-a-night new, if you want to be really specific.”

“Kanny, we get it.” Porrim tried to nip it in the bud, but Kankri was already going. His nerves were high and his hackles were raised and this was _not a good day_. He rolled right into another tangent about how to sensitively broach the subject of another disabilities without pale overtones, which then shifted into the need to differentiate between platonic pity and romantic pity, which somehow became a complaint about the lack of appreciation for purely platonic relationships in society today because a troll could definitely soothe his friend without wanting to pile them, _thank you very much_.

And so he talked the entire time. He was pretty sure they weren’t listening, and for once that didn’t bother him too much. He wasn’t so much trying to get their attention so much as hold his own. If he focused on the words, he didn’t have to focus on the fact that Arryss was so close he could feel the heat of her on his thigh, or the fact that no matter how gently she was guided Meulin looked like she was about to start crying again, or the fact that Porrim wouldn’t stop flashing him that _darned_ look when she thought he wasn’t looking. He continued to talk (a little quieter) when Arryss turned to him and told him that she was out of danger of bleeding to death, but that he still needed to treat her gently. She said something about bringing her medicine later, and then gave him an odd look when he began to describe how to get to her hive. He continued to talk even as they were walking out the door, and was so focused on getting the words out that it was not until Porrim was about to close the door that he realized that they had left Meulin behind.

“Porrim.”

She stopped at the sound of her name, or perhaps at the sudden stop in his speech. She turned, and he noticed the dark rings around her eyes and the way she was biting the corner of her mouth, which she only did when she was desperately fighting sleep. She could battle her exhaustion later. Meulin needed her.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home, Kanny.” She frowned at him. “I’m tired, I’ve been up all day and all night.”

“What about Meulin?”

She sighed. “Weren’t you listening?” She rolled her eyes. Of course he wasn’t. “She’s staying here. We don’t know what happened, and it’s probably safer for her here. Also, she really doesn’t need to be alone right now.”

“She wouldn’t be alone; she’d be with you.” He crossed his arms and frowned, but he was sure she was taking note of the fact that he was still standing very close.

“I’m busy, Kanny, you know that. I can’t grubsit her. I’ll already be in enough trouble for ditching work to come take care of her tonight. Arryss will be back tomorrow night with medicine. You’ll be fine.”

She closed the door with a heavier hand than was strictly necessary, hard enough that even Kankri heard the resounding slam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be just one chapter but holy fuck it turned out to be WAY longer than I planned. I'm at 10,000 words already, and I haven't even started the final part.
> 
> Also I'm just gonna come out and say that it has been a long-ass time since I've played Openbound. However, I love the Alpha Trolls and dedicated a great deal of their story to memory. Everything I couldn't quite remember, I supplemented with the wiki, as I am trying to make this as canon compliant as possible. That said, however, there are no doubt finer details that have either slipped my mind or that I just plain disagree with. So if there is some extremely important detail that I've cocked up, then I've either forgotten canon or am deliberately and willfully ignoring it. Feel free to point it out if I fucked up monumentally, so I can clarify which it is.


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is so much longer than it was supposed to be. I wrote it, went to publish it, decided I hated it, and rewrote it from the ground up. And then it became very long. So long it became two chapters. Two chapters with six pesterlog sections, because apparently I hate myself. I ended up scrapping my favorite bit, which was the Kurloz/Kankri pesterlog, which is a lot shorter now (for Kankri, Kurloz was always intended to be mostly silent) and affords less opportunity for Kankri to put his foot in his mouth.
> 
> And speaking of: If Kankri doesn't seem like A MUCH of a self-absorbed scumbag in this, please note that that is kinda on purpose. He is still a self-absorbed scumbag, don't get me wrong, but I believe that Kankri's brand of scumbaggery can only be achieved through sweeps of maturation and growth and a single drawned out traumatic event. That's a story, however, for another flashback.
> 
> And speaking of rewriting! The first chapter has been edited a little bit! Nothing major that changes the story or anything, just some things that, in my opinion, helped it flow a little bit better.

Kankri woke up in a panic. He tried to stretch and his fist hit something too warm and solid to be a pillow. His eyes flew open, and he jerked up into a sitting position, reaching blindly into his sylladex for a weapon and—

…and it was just Meulin. Luckily he realized _before_ letting his cushiony weapon fly. Chagrined and half-asleep, he returned the pillow back to the depths of his inventory to be flung another day. It was just Meulin. He wasn’t being attacked or strangled or groped or anything like that. It was just Meulin. Just Meulin. Just this relative stranger who up until several hours ago had been bleeding all over his ablutionblock due to some unknown traumatic event and was now in _his_ bed, wearing _his_ pajamas, cuddling _his_ favorite seahorse plush.

That wasn’t comforting at all.

After a long while, Kankri lowered himself back down, forcing himself to lie on his back and stare up.

He stared at the swirling designs he had painted last equinox with Mituna and Latula’s help, following the swooping curves and harsh lines across the ceiling. It was a familiar exercise that often helped him get back to sleep, letting him focus on something that was predictable and pleasing to see. His mind, however, was still too focused on Meulin. His bed was bigger than he needed, but it was far too small for him to share. He couldn’t help being hyperaware of her beside him. He could feel the weight and heat of her to his right, so close that if he shifted even the slightest bit, they would be touching. It put him on edge, like electricity dancing across his skin and settling at the base of his spine. He tried to relax and drift back off to sleep, but he knew before he even began that it was a fruitless endeavor. He had barely gotten to sleep yesterday, so tense that he’d stared at the ceiling for hours stiff-necked and uncomfortable. Eventually the sheer exhaustion of the night had caught up to him and pulled him unconscious without his consent, but he had woken up to every minute shift and accidental brushing of hands. To make matters worse, he had had _daymares_ for the first time in _ages_ , dreaming again and again that he woke to find Meulin bleeding to death in his bed.

That was the silver lining to this entire situation, he supposed. At least she had stopped bleeding.

Eventually, he gave up. He definitely was not getting back to sleep. He was far too aware of Meulin beside him and of the sunlight that bled through his tightly drawn curtains. It couldn’t be more than a few hours past midday, but Kankri slid out of bed anyway and made his way to the ablutiontrap. Meulin did not so much as stir. He closed the door as quietly as he knew how, remembering belatedly that there was absolutely no need to. He was sure he could slam the door with all his might and she wouldn’t notice.

That was a freeing thought.

Kankri stripped himself gratefully of his sticky pajamas. It was far too late in the warm season for him to wear such heavy sleepwear, but there had been absolutely _no_ way he was climbing in bed with Meulin nude, as was his usual habit. He’d been so uncomfortable that he’d even put on a _shirt_ , long-sleeved and thick, and he was certainly paying for it now. He’d felt like he had been _boiling_ in there. He was sure the heat was yet another reason for his discomfort. Even through his clothes and hers, his skin felt itchy and hot, and he stayed in the ablutionstall far longer than he needed to, scrubbing at his skin under cool water until he was positively rosy.

After a long ablution and half a can of energy drink, Kankri felt a little bit better. He pulled on a clean pair of pants, white with loud multi-colored designs, and went about his normal routine. He stepped very quickly through his respiteblock, deliberately keeping his eyes away from the bed. He couldn’t help noting that, in his absence, Meulin had hogged all the blankets.

He rummaged around in the nutritionblock for the better part of half an hour before deciding he didn’t have the energy to make any real food. He grabbed another energy drink from the thermal hull and put on a pot of water to boil and went to his husktop. He sat down heavily and booted it up, intent to just go about his business and pretend that none of this was happening. Porrim would be back, he told himself, and she would definitely realize the error of her ways in leaving Meulin here.

Kankri had spent the entirety of yesterday trying to explain to Meulin the many rules he’d spontaneously invented in the event of someone being forced into his hive for an extended stay. After several hours of frustrating mime and aggravated yelling from both parties, he’d finally resorted to lending her his palmhusk and trolling her his many instructions. Most of them she’d immediately decided to ignore. She’d left her shoes in the middle of the floor, had left her cups littered about the hive, and had eaten all of his spiced grubloaf in one sitting.

She hadn’t been very talkative—

Ah. Scratch that thought. He grimaced at his own lack of sensitivity.

Take two: Meulin hadn’t been very _responsive_ even after Porrim and Arryss had left, and had continued to act confused and dazed as he tried to guide her through basic tasks. It had taken every ounce of self-control in him not to call Porrim when Meulin began yawning and he realized there were literally no surfaces in his hive she could sleep on aside from his own bed. He didn’t think himself so callous that he would force her to sleep on his pile, but nor was he not to self-sacrificing that he was willing to do the same himself. That had left him in the extremely uncomfortable position of having to share the bed, which had gone about as well as he’d expected. They’d both laid down so close to the far ends of the bed that Meulin had actually fallen off twice (Kankri only once, that he remembered or would admit to).

Kankri yawned, rubbed at his eye, and took a generous swig of his energy drink. It was appropriately disgusting and brought back unpleasantly pleasant memories. He still had _cases_ of this swill in his nourishmentcloset that Mituna had left in anticipation of the trisweeply marathons that had become their tradition.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of white. He turned to see Crabdad slinking out of the nutritionblock, looking every bit the avoidant and guilty lusus he was. He quailed under Kankri’s glare. He’d made himself scarce yesterday, having an even bigger issue with blood and strangers than Kankri did, and this was the first Kankri had seen him since breakfast the day before. He’d heard him (Crabdad in distress was pretty much impossible _not_ to hear, even for Kankri, who was convinced that the only reason he’d survived grubhood was because he’d gotten a lusus so loud that even his disability was practically a nonissue) clicking unhappily in the background but that was the extent of his involvement in the crisis. He looked around furtively, as if to make sure there were no more bleeding intruders, and vaguely signed a greeting in Kankri’s direction before motioning questioningly towards the respiteblock where Meulin still slept.

Kankri shrugged. “Who knows?” he said in response to the question he assumed had been posed.

Crabdad let out a high whine of distress or resignation, and wringed his claws. He looked from Kankri to the respiteblock again and again, clicking nervously.

“Don’t be obtuse.” Kankri waved away the presumed assumptions that may have been made, which quite frankly he didn’t appreciate in the least. “She will _not_ be here long.”

Crabdad didn’t look convinced, but he obligingly lowered his head and shuffled away towards the nutritionblock, where Kankri would probably find him later sleeping in the nourishmentcloset later in the night. Now that Kankri was older and less prone to leap headlong off of tall surfaces, he spent a great deal of his time there.

His husktop finally booted up and Kankri went through the familiar motions of pulling up everything he would need to keep himself awake for the rest of the day. This in itself wasn’t terribly unusual. There were plenty of days that Kankri couldn’t sleep and found himself at his husktop, entertaining himself with the juvenile and poorly constructed arguments of the internet masses. Comparatively speaking, this felt downright normal.

Once he opened Trollian, however, his morning took a turn for the definitely-not-normal.

The first thing that popped up was his conversation last night with an unresponsive Kurloz. Or, more accurately, _Porrim’s_ conversation last night with an unresponsive Kurloz, several hours of silence, which was _then_ followed by his conversation with an unresponsive Kurloz in the early morning.

cheliformGospel began trolling tacetCacodaemonia.  
CG: Kurlo+z, this is Po+rrim. Meulin has fo+und her way to+ Kankri’s do+o+rstep, bleeding heavily fro+m her head. She is currently passed o+ut in his bathtub, and we’re cleaning her up.  
CG: I think she wo+uld appreciate yo+ur presence right no+w. Where are you? Do+ yo+u have any idea what happened? I’m go+ing to+ fetch so+meo+ne who+ can help her, but it wo+uld be better if I co+uld tell her what actually happened.  
cheliformGospel ceased trolling tacetCacodaemonia.  
cheliformGospel began trolling tacetCacodaemonia.  
CG: Hell9, Kurl9z. This is n9t P9rrim. Why she did n9t l9g 9ut 9f my acc9unt when she had all these imp9rtant c9nversations is an issue f9r an9ther time. I am c9ntacting y9u primarily t9 update y9u 9n Meulin’s c9nditi9n. While I’m sure y9u will s99n 6e here t9 see it f9r y9urself, I feel it is my duty t9 inf9rm y9u, as her l9ngest and m9st dev9ted quadrantmate, 9f precisely h9w she is d9ing.  
CG: P9rrim has already inf9rmed y9u 9f m9st 9f the 6asics 6f the situati9n: Meulin 6leeding 9n my lawnring, mysterious head w9unds, the fact that n9 9ne kn9ws what happened, n9t even Meulin, and the fact that y9u are c9nspicu9usly and uncharacteristically missing fr9m the wh9le situati9n. F9r Meulin’s sake, I h9pe that y9u are n9t dead.  
CG: Meulin is awake n9w, and has 6een f9r several h9urs. She has eaten and had s9me tea and is calming d9wn fr9m what I w9uld assume was a harr9wing experience. She cann9t tell me if this assumpti9n is c9rrect, h9wever, 6ecause she cann9t seem t9 remem6er what happened. She claims t9 have fallen asleep next t9 y9u and w9ken up in my a6luti9ntrap in a great deal of pain. This lends m9re evidence t9 the unf9rtunate c9nclusion that y9u are dead 9r at least similarly injured which, again, I h9pe will 6e pr9ven false.  
CG: There is g99d news and 6ad news t9 6e delivered, and since P9rrim has apparently disappeared int9 the scalding light 9f day, I must 6e the 9ne t9 deliver 69th, t9 what is, I am sure, mutual displeasure.  
CG: The g99d news is that Meulin is n9t fatally injured, n9r is her c9nditi9n likely t9 get any w9rse. N9w that she has calmed d9wn, she appears t9 6e feeling much 6etter. All 6leeding has ceased, and the w9unds, which were entirely internal, seem t9 6e healing very nicely, which is very g99d c9nsidering it’s 9nly 6een a few h9urs. She appears t9 6e suffering n9 9ther sympt9ms, and she is 9therwise c9mpletely uninjured.  
CG: The 6ad news is that she appears t9 have been deafened. Whatever happened t9 her seems t9 have damaged her sp9ngecl9ts quite severely, and Arryss claims we sh9uld c9nsider 9urselves lucky that she was n9t damaged any further. I w9uld suggest f9r the sake 9f y9ur c9ntinued relati9nship investing in classes f9r sign language, 9f which there are several varieties (I pers9nally rec9mmend East Universal with an East Seadweller accent, 6ut the ch9ice is ultimately y9urs) 9r, since I am well aware 9f y9ur preferences, taking s9me time t9 learn fr9m a pr9fessi9nal mime 9f s9me kind. At least f9r the time 6eing. It is quite likely there will 6e lingering damage, and Meulin will 6e hard 9f hearing if n9t c9mpletely deaf f9r at least a few sweeps.   
CG: I say all this assuming, 9f c9urse, that y9u are a) still alive, and 6) still willing t9 6e her matesprit in light 9f this devel9pment. She runs the high p9tential 9f 6eing culled n9w, which as I understand it can 6e a strain 9n any relati9nship.  
CG: 6ut I digress. I merely wished t9 inf9rm y9u 9f her c9nditi9n. G99d day, Kurl9z.  
cheliformGospel ceased trolling tacetCacodaemonia.  
tacetCacodaemonia began trolling cheliformGospel.  
TC: YOU BETTER TAKE MOTHERFUCKING CARE OF MY KITTYBTICH MOTHERFUCKER  
tacetCacodaemonia ceased trolling cheliformGospel.  


The response seemed to have come several hours ago, and Kurloz gave no indication whatsoever of his location or whether or not he intended to come fetch Meulin, as Kankri would assume he might have. (He knew they were red for each other, but as he understood it, quadrant vacillation wasn’t entirely uncommon, especially between adolescents, and Meulin had always seemed inclined to the warmer quadrants.) There was also no mention of what had happened, or even if Kurloz _knew_ what had happened.

Kankri supposed he should just consider himself lucky that Kurloz was even alive. Probably alive. It was, unfortunately, quite possible he was contacting Kankri from beyond the grave, but he tried not to be a pessimist. Kurloz was tougher than he looked.

He took a few moments to properly compose a reply, discarding and rehearsing until his response was perfect. When he attempted to type his reply, however, he received an obnoxious error klaxon. He stopped dead, squinting at his husktop. It sat innocently before him, and the blinking grey cursor mocked. Hesitantly, he pressed down on a key. Despite mostly expecting it, he still jumped when the error sounded again, and again, and again, and thrice more until he finally decided that maybe he wasn’t supposed to respond.

Darned highbloods and their weird magic nonsense.

Since he obviously wasn’t going to get any stimulating conversation out of Kurloz anytime soon, Kankri minimized the window.

Correction: _tried_ to minimize the window.

Kankri was pretty sure that if it wasn’t ridiculously tricked out and the most expensive and precious piece of hardware he owned, he would have sent this darned husktop flying through the window four errors ago. He tried to minimize the window. Error klaxon. He tried to close the window. Error klaxon. He tried to move the window out of the way. Error klaxon. It was now, apparently, a permanent fixture on his husktop’s landscape, which was extremely inconvenient seeing as it was dead center on the screen. Kankri let out a few strong and carefully selected curses as he wrestled ineffectually with the chat, finally giving up with a huff and a very dramatic throwing-up of the arms.

He couldn’t decide if this was unsettling, annoying, or just to be expected. Kurloz had always been… _strange_ , and things like this just tended to happen around him, from what he understood. After giving it some thought, Kankri also stumbled upon the _decidedly_ unsettling idea that Kurloz could very well be _watching_ him to make sure he followed through, through his webcam or other more supernatural means. He gave up trying to move the window, not wanting to seem too obviously antagonistic. Darned weird creepy highbloods and their ridiculous and nonsensical voodoo nonsense.

He was forced to come up with a way to resize and position all his other windows so he could still access them, but the strain on his eyes (doing so in turn shrunk the font size and screwed around with the format) turned out to be too much after less than an hour, and he was forced to turn away. Looks like he would have to find another way to occupy his time. There were still a few hours left in the day.

He stepped away from the husktop. Perhaps in a few more hours, when he was of sounder mind.

He settled on his pile, picking a book randomly from the top. He picked a bookmark and started reading, though it was hard to focus on the words over the sound of his own teeth grinding.

Eventually, Crabdad came to tap him on the shoulder, whistling in a stunning impression of the tea kettle, which he indicated had been whistling for the better part of an hour. Kankri rushed to it before all the water boiled away, which had happened many times before. Sometimes Crabdad thought it necessary to inform Kankri of his own mindlessness, though most of the time he was just as forgetful. Kankri wasn’t sure how he’d managed to survive grubhood with a lusus that regularly forgot to open doors before attempting to walk through them.

He hummed tunelessly as be began to make himself a cup of tea. He had a variety of blends to choose from, most of which he made himself, organized in his cabinet in descending order of the time of night in which he preferred to drink them. He chose the very first box, which was basically an energy drink but more leaf-y, and so sweet that it made the base of his horns tingle. It was his go-to early morning blend, which would give him the extra boost of energy he would need after enduring such a restless day.

After a moment of thought, he pulled down a second cup and took a few leaves from the second box. Unsure of her preferences, he made the tea to his own specifications, and, also unsure of how precisely he should present it to her, left the cup on the counter where Meulin could easily see it when she came out of the respiteblock.

This time he went to the entertainmentcube, sitting heavily down on one of the bean chairs he’d been gifted a sweep or so ago. That was back when his hive was even more inhospitable than it was now, which he had been told was a talent in itself. Latula had very loudly proclaimed that she refused to hang out with someone who had no furniture, but rather than stop hanging out with him, as he’d expected, she’d just bought him some furniture. More than half of the furniture in his apartment had come from her or Mituna, and most of it was barely comfortable. He had still yet to decide, for that detail, if the act of kindness was actually kind or just kind of petty. It was hard to tell with her.

Either way. The friendship had ended, she’d moved on, and he still have the comfiest bean chairs on all of Beforus.

He turned on the entertainment cube and flipped idly through the channels until he found something that wasn’t completely grating on his nerves that was also entertaining enough to keep him awake. Every now and then he took a sip of tea, hoping he could drink it quickly before it cooled. He had put so much sugar in it that it would be utterly sickening when it got cold.

Ah, this was one of his favorites. The title was excruciatingly long (somewhat unusual for a serial; there were still, as far as he knew, some less description-heavy titles still available) and full of tongue twisters that made even him fumble, but it was something along the lines of “The Humorous Adventures Of A Group Of Six Mid-Bloods Inhabiting Four Adjacent Blocks In A Communal Hivestem And Their Fumbling Attempts At Platonic Relationships, Quadranted Relationships, Career Choices, And Money Management With Varying Degrees Of Success Depending On The Episode And Character In Question, Featuring Extreme Quadrant Vacillation As The Story Demands And Implied Sexual Content Of A Casual Nature, Etc., Etc., Etc.” It was not the most intellectually stimulating show, and often its attempts at humor fell flat and offensive, but there was something damnably likeable and laughable about the cast of characters which, though not terribly diverse (four olives, a teal, and a borderline hemophobic caricature of a yellowgreen) were just similar enough to his own social circle that he derived some pleasure from watching their often hopper-beast-brained antics.

He sipped his tea and waited for the inevitable reveal of Crista’s tryst with Unnamed Shop Patron #248. It was sure to be dramatic, given the tension they’d been building up since the season had taken a turn for the—

“CATKRI!!”

Kankri spun around so quickly that his teacup went flying. He reached into his sylladex, grabbing the first thing that came forward, and sent his impromptu weapon soaring faceward, realizing only after it had struck that there was really only one person who would be in his hive right now, and she was hardly dangerous enough to warrant such a panicked reaction.

Meulin blinked at him, and then blinked down at the snuggleplane that had settled around her ankles. In one hand she held a book, no doubt pilfered from his pile, which appeared to be on the intricacies of adult vs. adolescent vs. juvenile quadrant relationships, and in the other she held the cup of tea he had left for her, which was remarkably un-spilled considering the blanket-y assault she had just endured. She looked from him to the plane again, and pouted dramatically.

“That wasn’t very nice!”

It took Kankri a second to decipher what she said. Once he did, he assumed a properly contrite expression, which he immediately belied with a stuck-up chin and crossed arms.

“I apologize,” he said, not sounding the least bit so. “You startled me, however, and given that you are, by all accounts, a stranger and intruder here, and given that you may or may not have some kind of violent beast after you, _and_ given my own position as a young off-spectrum troll on the cusp of adulthood who is extremely vulnerable to any on-spectrum troll of olive-or-above with the faintest sense of patriotism, you can hardly blame me for being a little bit jumpy.”

Her face screwed up immediately, but Kankri didn’t realize his mistake until he’d reached the end of his startled impromptu speech. He opened his mouth to apologize again, then closed it with a snap. That wouldn’t do anyone any good. He hummed instead, searching his mind for something to do that would get his point across. Perhaps if he just shrugged…but that might convey nonchalance, which he definitely _felt_ but didn’t necessarily want to admit to.

As it turned out, he needn’t have expended the effort. She turned away from him after only a few tense seconds and lowered herself into a bean chair awkwardly. She watched the entertainmentcube with obviously forced focus, drumming her fingers roughly on the lip of her tea cup, which she sipped from infrequently. He tried to think of something to do to communicate…but ultimately decided it likely wasn’t worth the effort and reached into his sylladex for a towel.

It was with great reluctance that he pulled himself out of his bean chair throne and began to pat at the carpet, which now bore a fragrant and warm dark spot where his tea had met its unfortunate demise. When he thought the fabric sufficiently sponged at, he spread the towel over the mess to soak up whatever he hadn’t gotten, and looked for his thrown tea cup. Luckily it had landed gently, and harbored nary a chip or crack to tell the tale of his lapse of composure.

Now that the adrenaline of that moment of panic was no longer pounding in his sponge clots, Kankri felt more than a small amount of embarrassment. How ridiculous must he have looked, throwing a _snuggle plane_ of all things at an assumed intruder. He supposed he should be grateful his modus was kind enough to give him something soft and harmless, and that Meulin likely didn’t hear his squawk of terror, which he had been gleefully informed several times was the cutest, loudest, and most undignified noise in the history of trollkind (and, as one well knew, Mituna never exaggerated).

He snuck a glance at Meulin. She wasn’t looking at the cube anymore, instead staring at her tea cup as if attempting to divine some kind of future from its murky depths. Knowing the kinds of things he knew her and Kurloz to do, he wouldn’t doubt it.

He left the towel on the floor and took his cup to the nutritionblock, where Crabdad lingered quietly by the thermal hull. Kankri shot him a weak glare. His hands shook slightly as he put the cup into the nutritionplanetrap. He wiped his clammy palms on his pants.

“You could have warned me she was coming,” he accused, and his guardian let out a low trill of what Kankri could only assume was contrition. He couldn’t really scold him, not in any manner that would leave a lasting impression, so he was forced to swallow the anxiety and panic that was coming and going in waves.

His tea was gone and he didn’t have the energy to make another cup, but he still had half a can of energy drink left, so Kankri went back as his husktop. It was decidedly less enjoyable to drink, but within seconds he felt the buzz at the back of skull, which was either going to distract him from or heighten the growing sense of unease he felt knowing that Meulin was in his hive. He considered very briefly returning to the entertainmentcube, but he didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of sharing such an intimate space with a troll who was by all accounts a stranger to him. Meulin was the friend of a moirail of an ex-friend, which honestly just made her presence here that much more baffling. Why on Beforus would she have come to _him_ of all trolls? He knew he kept coming back to that, but in addition to being annoying it was also truly baffling. Perhaps it was merely a matter of proximity, though he hadn’t the faintest idea how she even knew where he lived.

Eventually, though, Kankri thought of other things. He could only ponder Meulin’s strangeness for so long before the novelty wore off, and it wore off quickly. He attempted once again to brave the tangled mess that was his desktop. The eyestrain was no less painful than before, and he found himself frequently leaning away from the screen, staring up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly and trying to pretend that everything was normal.

When he looked back at his desktop, he saw a new Trollian message from a contact he was almost completely convinced he’d never added.

prostheticIdiosyncrasy began trolling cheliformGospel.  
PI: Hey VⒶntⒶs  
PI: Just sending you Ⓐ qui©k messⒶge to let you know I'm on my wⒶy over to your hive to ©heck up on Leijon  
I'll be there in like three hours tops  
PI: MⒶryⒶm told me you like to have wⒶrning  
PI: Given how much distress you must be in I don't want to do anything thⒶt'd freak you out Ⓐny more yⒶknow  
PI: MⒶryⒶm's got some Ⓐh extrⒶ duties Ⓐssigned ©Ⓐuse she dit©hed work yesterdⒶy so it'll just be me  
PI: I hope you don't mind  
PI: :)  


Oh this was _just_ what he needed. It was Arryss, not that she’d bothered to make that clear. Kankri ground his teeth as he took his fingers to keys. He typed several angry replies, deleting them and starting afresh until the worst of his aggravation was out.

CG: Thank y9u f9r inf9rming me. P9rrim was c9rrect in her assessment 9f my preferences, th9ugh I d9u6t she explained the reas9ning 6ehind them which, as a suita6ly patri9tic tr9ll (which I have assumed y9u t9 6e given y9ur c9nduct), I'm sure y9u w9uld n9t fail t9 divine were y9u fully inf9rmed. The next time y9u see her, please thank P9rrim 9n my 6ehalf, and tell her her f9resight is, as always, appreciated.  
CG: As f9r y9ur c9ming al9ne, I cann9t h9nestly say that it causes me any undue distress, as y9u are, 9f the f9ur 9f us, the 9nly 9ne medically trained, and the 9nly 9ne wh9 c9uld pr9vide Meulin with any kind 9f assistance.  
CG: I shall leave the d99r unl9cked until midnight.  
PI: Ⓐlrighty thⒶnks Vantas  
PI: See you soon  
prostheticIdiosyncrasy ceased trolling cheliformGospel.  


He took a deep breath. He supposed this meant he had to _actually_ unlock the door now. He sent a glare over his shoulder at Meulin, who was sitting on the floor now, playing with the hem of her skirt. He typed a few more aborted rants to Arryss’s idle handle until he felt the crease between his brows relax and the tension in his shoulders ease up. This situation was only getting more aggravating by the second.

He got Meulin’s attention, waving his arms in increasingly exaggerating motions until she would’ve had to have been blinded as well to miss him. He showed her Arryss’s message, and he couldn’t avoid showing her Kurloz’s in the process as well. Judging from the look on her face, she hadn’t known Kurloz was even alive either, and her frustration at being unable to respond to his message led to her throwing her tea cup across the room with a high-pitched scream that left even Kankri’s largely defective ears ringing. While she was across the room helping Crabdad with the shattered cup, Kankri typed a quick message to Arryss, though she was still idle, warning her of Meulin’s now aggravated state. He closed the chat window, and it offered a conspicuous lack of resistance to his doing so.

Crabdad answered the door while Kankri was in the nutritionblock, having overcome his exhaustion by sheer desire and force of will to make himself another cup of tea. Seventh box from the left on the second row this time, a calming blend that probably wouldn’t sit well with the three cans of energy drink and half cup of energizing tea already in his system.

He emerged from the nutritionblock and _immediately_ turned around and went back in.

Arryss was sitting beside Meulin in front of the entertainmentcube, which was still playing, but had been muted. She had an open case beside her, large and unwieldy, and she’d left it open to reveal a frightening array of wicked-looking instruments whose purposes he didn’t even _want_ to attempt to divine. She had one such instrument in her hand, and he didn’t want to think about how much of that long wand was currently inside Meulin’s ear canal. He put a hand over his suddenly roiling digestion sac and spun around so quickly it made him dizzy.

Crabdad gave him a quizzical look from the nourishmentcloset, where he had squeezed his large frame immediately after letting Arryss in. When Kankri was younger, he’d hide in there with him whenever company came over. He desperately wished he could now, but at seven sweeps he was a bit too big to fit. Also much too old. Hiding from strangers in closets was wiggler behavior.

He sipped his tea and waited. And waited. And waited. He tapped his foot and drummed his finger on the countertop. He finished his first cup of tea in conservative sips, and poured himself another. This one he sipped less conservatively.

How long could this possibly take? What were they even _doing_ in there?

He pulled his phone from his pants pocket and began playing games to pass the time.

A flash of jade in the corner of his eye and he turned his head to see Arryss standing in the doorway. She looked grim with her dark eyes and deep frown. She looked over her shoulder briefly and then stepped closer to him. He slid a step or two away discreetly. She flashed him an annoyed look and closed the distance between them again, with a firmer step this time.

She wasn’t _that_ much older than him, surely, but she was bigger and brawnier than anyone he’d ever been this close to. She seemed to take up his entire nutritionblock. His bloodpusher pounded anxiously at her proximity, and although he knew she wasn’t here to cull him or kill him, it was instinctual, he knew, for juveniles to fear adults. She wasn’t an adult yet, but she was close enough.

She didn’t seem to care a nut for his anxiety.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. She was talking far too quietly for him to be able to gauge her tone, but her eyebrows were drawn together and her eyes darted back in Meulin’s direction frequently, so he knew he wasn’t here to tell him she’d made a miraculous recovery in the past thirty minutes. “About Leijon.”

“I would assume we have very little else to talk about,” he said dryly.

Her look of annoyance returned. “Not the time,” she warned. “Listen, I don’t know exactly what happened to do this, but I’m guessing either an extremely loud noise or some kind psionic attack because almost all of the damage has been done strictly to her inner tubes.” She paused to take a deep breath, either preparing herself mentally or just being unnecessarily dramatic. “Vantas, the organs in her tubes literally exploded.”

Kankri choked on the tea he had been attempting to sip nonchalantly as, unbidden, graphic images of what Arryss said began to play out in his head. He bent over, struggling to breathe through lungfuls of nearly-scalding tea. Above him, Arryss’s voice was a frantic drone, one he struggled to block out as he focused on not dying in the most humiliating way possible.

Once he regained control of his respiratory system, Kankri managed to croak a very eloquent, “ _What_?” He dried his leaking eyes before he raised his head with great effort, blinking rapidly to avoid letting any telltale tears slip.

Arryss, to her credit, looked properly contrite and upset. She bit at the corner of her mouth nervously, and clasped her fingers tighter around the handle of her suitcase. “I…don’t think you want me to go into more detail than that,” she said, eyebrows drawn together. Her hand dropped to her side; she had been about to reach out to him.

“I don’t,” he agreed readily. His voice was too weak for him to hear it, but he knew it sounded croaky and strained and he cleared his throat as he straightened up. He shuddered as lingering traces of those gorey images floated through his head. “I really would have preferred you not give any detail at all.”

“Well…” She looked away, staring at the cups in the nutritionplanetrap. He tilted his head to get a better look at her mouth. “Pretty much everything in there is gone. She’s pretty much completely deaf.”

Without thinking, Kankri looked away quickly, to where Meulin was sitting in front of the entertainmentcube. She wasn’t watching it, not judging by the direction her head was turned. Her shoulders were drawn, her head downcast.

Arryss’s voice hummed for a few seconds before he looked back, catching the tail end of her sentence.

“…unlikely that anything can be…fixed, right.” She shrugged helplessly. “The most we can hope for is that it doesn’t get any worse, you know.”

Kankri blinked. “So…”

She looked up at him, and he flinched away from the guilt and pity that she wore plainly on her face. “I…she’s probably never going to regain her hearing.” She lifted her hand again as if to touch him, and he very-subtly jerked his arm away from her offered comfort. She didn’t seem to take it personally. If anything, the pity in her face only grew stronger. “I’m so sorry.”

His first instinct was to tell her she didn’t need to be; this was hardly his problem. There was no reason at all for her to apologize to _him_. _Meulin_ was the one who probably deserved all this guilt and pity. Kankri was nothing more than a disinterested bystander in this. His second instinct was to tell her that he wasn’t really surprised. He couldn’t imagine too many spongeclot-exploding injuries that people just walked away from without lasting damage. His third was to tell her that she was being spectacularly insensitive, informing the mostly-deaf troll that his acquaintance was completely deaf, as if being deaf was some kind of horrible handicap that deserved all the pity in the world.

When he failed to say anything, her expression faltered and she continued talking, falteringly, uncertainly.

“I…I can leave something to help with her pain. Something topical, or something you can dissolve in liquid.” She looked pointedly at the tea cup he had placed on the counter after his unfortunate brush with death.

He still wasn’t sure why she was telling him this instead of Meulin herself, but he was beginning to get a nagging suspicion that definitely didn’t sit well. He folded his arms over his chest.

“I’m sure Meulin would appreciate it.”

His agreement seemed to give her some strength, and she laid her case on the counter. It barely fit, and she had to brace it against her hip to keep it from tumbling to the ground. Kankri quickly averted his gaze when she opened it, having absolutely _no_ desire to see that disturbing array of medical equipment again. It occurred to him that he’d never thought to ask _which_ medical profession Arryss was pursuing.

He counted sixty-seven seconds before daring to turn his head back, and caught Arryss at the tail end of a sentence.

“…twice daily, but maybe one more time if the pain gets really bad,” she was saying. She was clicking the latch of her briefcase closed, and had set three colorful bottles on the counter in its place. As she spoke, she pointed to the second one. “That one can be dissolved in hot liquid once a day, but no more than that. You should switch out between them every two weeks until they’re both gone, or until this one’s gone. And, ya know…” She indicated the last, smallest bottle. “That one’s for emergencies. Like if it starts bleeding again, or it hurts so bad she can’t move or something. Drop that shit in her ears and don’t let her shake it out. Hold her down if you have to.”

Kankri’s digestion sac clenched. That didn’t sound pleasant _at all_. Arryss looked up and caught sight of his face, and looked properly chagrined.

“I’ll, uh, send you instructions via Trollian tonight, in case you need a refresher.”

He couldn’t say anything. If he opened his mouth, he would probably vomit again. Given that he had nothing in there but tea and energy soda, that would likely be an unspeakably unpleasant experience. He nodded weakly, and Arryss seemed to take that for what it was. She smiled weakly and straightened up. This, of course, made her seem even taller, which did nothing to ease Kankri’s spinning head.

“If you need anything, just troll me, or troll Maryam, and she’ll holla at me.”

He nodded again. Arryss grimaced and reached out, very slowly and very awkwardly, to pat his elbow.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, and seemed to be genuine. “I really wish there was something I could’ve done.”

He let out a strangled noise from somewhere deep in his throat, unable and unwilling to commit to the effort of fully-fledged words. Feeling a bit stronger, he picked up his tea and took a ginger sip. It had cooled somewhat, and was a balm to his aching throat. For a moment or two, he let the two of them stand there in awkward, forced silence while he tried to purge his brain of all the unpleasant images and implications that had begun to swim before his eye stalks. Finally, Arryss could endure it no more. She fidgeted nonstop under Kankri’s gaze. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her face, waiting patiently for her to get fed up and start talking again.

“Listen, it’s past midnight, and I…I gotta get back. I really shouldn’t even be here, but Maryam pretty much threatened to…ah. She would hurt me if I didn’t come, and Leijon—that her name? —looked real bad, so I figured…but anyway.” Her face darkened and she averted her eyes. “I should go.”

“Of course. I’ll show you out.”

He escorted Arryss to the door, endured an awkward and stilted farewell, and closed his door so firmly that he felt the vibrations in his shoulder.

 _Thank the Empress that’s over_ , he thought, thought it was a short-lived joy, as he turned around and caught sight of Meulin.

She was still sitting where Arryss had left her, and possibly in the exact same position. She had her legs crossed, but had smoothed her skirt to hide as much skin as possible. Her shoulders were hunched and her head was tilted to one side, as if to allow a broad and brawny jade to poke around in her ear. Her eyes came up to meet his instantly, and a frown tugged at her lips. Kankri felt a small tremor in his back. He’d never really seen Meulin frown like that before. She always had something to her, a spark of cheer that even her bout of hysteria yesterday hadn’t completely erased.

Now he saw none of that. Her eyes were dark and clouded, and he could see her cheek shifting as she chewed on it anxiously. Her hands were balled up in her skirt. He could _feel_ the dread coming off her in waves, and felt it tenfold within himself. She looked like she was about to crumble, like the slightest movement or contact would cause a chain reaction that would end in her complete destruction.

He should talk to her. Definitely. She was probably panicking and mourning and wondering and wishing and doing all kinds of things that fell under the blanket term of “freaking out.” She had suffered what was no doubt an extremely traumatic experience, so traumatic she completely blocked it from her memory, which had left her completely deaf and, for the moment, almost completely alone.

Kankri went to the nutritionblock. He was going to need a lot more tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cheliformGospel  
> cheliform _(adjective | che·li·form \ˈkēləˌfȯrm, ˈke-\\)_ \- having the shape or form of a chela; clawlike, especially as a crab's claw  
>  gospel _(noun | gos·pel \ˈgäs-pəl\\) > \- an idea or set of ideas that someone believes and often tries to make other people believe_
> 
> tacetCacadaemonia  
> tacet _(ta·cet | ˈtä-ˌket; ˈtā-sət, ˈta-sət\\)_ \- used as a direction in music to indicate that an instrument is not to play during a movement or long section; Latin, literally, (it) is silent, from tacēre to be silent  
>  cacodaemonia _(noun | caco·de·mo·no·ma·nia \ˌkak-ə-ˌdē-mə-nō-ˈmā-nē-ə\\)_ \- alternate spelling of cacodemonia, which is a synonym of cacodemonomania, meaning a mania that causes a person to believe himself possessed and controlled by an evil spirit.


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god I did it. I finished this chapter. Honestly, the last scene of this chapter has been written, or at least drafted, almost since the beginning. I literally wrote the entire rest of the chapter yesterday, and the pesterlog on Saturday. God, the pesterlog is so long, and I hate myeslf. I write out the trolls' quirks as I'm writing the chat instead of going back and editing them and dear lord there are so many goddamn o's in the English language. Why are there so many o's.
> 
> Honestly, though as much as I bitch about pesterlogs (mostly because they are a bitch to format), I did really enjoy writing this one Kankri is really fun for me to write, especially like this.

Meulin took the news rather well, all things considered.

Granted, she did spend the first four hours after he (very gently) broke the news crying locked in the ablutionblock, and the next three hours after _that_ sitting on the load gaper completely unresponsive, but the fact that _only_ seven hours had been dedicated to completely and utterly freaking her shit was, to Kankri, something of an achievement. Sometime in hour five, he decided to try and be helpful, and made them both several cups of calming tea, passing it to her through the cracked-open door.

As he slid the last of his tea through the door, Kankri sat back on his heels. He stared at the grains in the wood of the door, awkwardness and discomfort settling beneath his skin like live wires. His fingers twitched and he gnawed on the inside of his cheek. Pressure mounted in his chest and throat, uncertainty and anxiety and annoyance and guilt boiling up inside him.

Even if he could come up with anything to say to comfort her, she wouldn’t hear him through the door, and he wouldn’t hear any reply she might have. If she _could_ hear him, he would like to point out how rude it was that she was using _his_ respiteblock to house her emotional breakdown, and perhaps suggest a few more suitable locations, such as, perhaps, the nutritionblock, or the recreationblock, or literally anywhere but the place where he slept. But alas.

Finally, he couldn’t bear to just stand outside the door waiting for her to finish her cup. He stood slowly, wincing as his hips and spine protested the sudden change in position. He swung his arms a few times to loosen up his joints.

A flash of white in the corner of his eye caught his attention: Crabdad was standing just outside the nutritionblock, wringing his claws frantically. His beady eyes went back and forth between Kankri and the door. He signed a question slowly, and Kankri scowled at him.

“Everything is _not_ going well,” he signed back.

He didn’t seem to understand, cocking his great head to the side and fluttering his mandibles awkwardly.

_But you have a friend over! That’s wonderful!_

Kankri sighed. Crabdad was sweet and obviously meant very well, but he had incredibly low standards when it came to Kankri’s social life. As far as he was concerned, _any_ face-to-face interaction was good, even if, as in this situation, it was quite possibly the worst kind of interaction ever to occur between two trolls not actively trying to kill or cull one another. Even in _that_ situation, he didn’t seem to grasp the finer points of troll social law. In the not-so-rare event that someone came to cull Kankri, he got excited just that they had company, perhaps not understanding the greater implication that the visitors were coming to take Kankri away from him. Knowing him, he would assume they were taking him to some big party and wave cheerily as he was taken away, signing delightedly to be back by sunrise.

He didn’t feel like explaining this overly complicated situation to his somewhat dim lusus, so Kankri settled for shaking his head and signing a taciturn, _She’s very upset_.

That did the situation little justice, but Crabdad at least seemed to understand it. His eyes went a little wide and he fluttered his mandibles rapidly, going back to wringing his claws. Kankri half-expected him to go back to the nutritionblock, but he stayed where he was, watching him anxiously.

The door slid open slowly, and a teacup was shoved out of the darkness by a small hand. Kankri sighed again and took it.

He had made two pots of tea, foreseeing they would need a lot, and assigned the larger to himself and the smaller to her, reasoning that, being shorter than him, she wouldn’t need as much. For his own preference, he’d added something extra to his pot, to keep him alert for what would surely be a long night…well, it was going on daytime now. At any rate, his portioning decisions seemed now to have been a mistake. Her pot was empty.

He poured her some of his. Surely the little kick wouldn’t hurt her too much.

She took the cup without apparently noticing on the different color, and closed the door strongly in his face. Though the sound was barely loud enough to grate on his nerves, he ground his teeth at the principle of it.

By hour six, he was sure something was going to break. Meulin requested tea less often now, which was a relief, as he was almost out. On the other hand, she had shown absolutely no signs that she was going to calm down, or come out, or let him in. It was nearing the hour when he would normally be getting ready for bed, but he doubted that was happening anytime soon. He was pacing around the block, unable to keep himself still for longer than a few seconds. Crabdad was still hovering in the doorway to the nutritionblock, waving his claws like he hadn’t since Kankri was a wiggler. He finally seemed to have grasped the severity of the situation and was responding to it in typical fashion. He was crooning loud enough for Kankri to hear, and every now and then he would make as if he was going to walk to the respiteblock, but he always chickened out after a few steps. Kankri glared at him.

“Coward,” he accused, and all his hapless lusus could do was awkwardly sign a question. He rolled his eyes. “ _No_ , I’m not going in there.” He was fairly certain she was locking the door anyway.

Halfway through hour eight was when Kankri broke. Meulin had just requested the last of his tea and Crabdad was whining in such a high pitch that it was making Kankri’s digestive sac writhe. He rubbed his eyelids with his knuckles. When he opened them again, his vision was dark and dotty, and the walls seemed to be swimming…and the room felt a little bit smaller than before.

He tried to sit it out. He really did. But the more he paced, the more the walls seemed to close in on him, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Meulin on the other side of that door, crying. He knew it was impossible, but he imagined that he could _hear_ her, pathetic and high-pitched, and so close that he could catch the smell of blood that still faintly clung to her.

He couldn’t take this anymore.

He waited until Meulin had her tea, and then he looked around for his phone. It wasn’t a fancy thing, just a second-hand shellphone Crabdad had found and Mituna had repaired, but if Meulin needed to get a hold of him, he would have it. Plus, there was someone he desperately needed to talk to. He shoved it deep into one of his pockets.

He waved to get Crabdad’s attention.

“I’m going out,” he announced. “I’ll be back by sunup.”

Luckily, he kept _some_ daytime clothes by the door, so he didn’t need to attempt to brave the emotional minefield that was his respiteblock door. He shrugged on the heavy coat with more haste than was strictly necessary, tucking his horns and hair carefully beneath the heavy brown hood. He fumbled with the door for a few moments, palms sweaty enough that it was difficult to grip the handle properly. It took him a moment to decide on locking the door; if intruders came, Meulin wouldn’t hear them, and Crabdad wouldn’t stop them. He locked the door and tucked the key in the topmost pocket of his pants, right near his collar.

He didn’t really go anywhere, but just stepping outside felt great. He breathed in deeply…and immediately regretted it. There was still a dried splatter of green blood on his lawnring, and it _reeked_. Luckily, out here, there was no one really to notice, but it might attract animals. He’d have to convince Crabdad to clean that later. For now, he just kept his eyes up and walked resolutely on.

He didn’t really have a destination, but living where he did, he didn’t really need one. Little grub Kankri was smart enough to have picked a location very remote for his hive (he often wondered where on Beforus he had surfaced to have found such a place), though not quite smart enough not to make his hive the most garishly hideous (but thankfully quite squat) thing for miles around. He could walk for hours and likely never see anyone else. The mother grub caves were half a night’s walk to the west, guarded by the stony, rolling hills and flanked by the dark and foreboding mountains. To the north and northwest were more grub caves, but they were the remote ones that the jades didn’t often actively tend to. To the east there was nothing but fields, going on for miles and miles and miles. There was an Imperial Highway nearby-ish, which was how this little bit of land had any traffic at all, and it wound southward, towards the nearest batch of hivestems and hubs and such nonsense.

Kankri did not go that way. He turned north. He kept his stride specibus close at hand. It wasn’t grub season, but there were still lusii about, and sometimes even when they didn’t have a grub to protect, they could still be hostile. Luckily, most lusii were loud enough that even he would hear them coming, and large enough that he would certainly feel them.

The night air was cool and sticky and there were no walls around him. The further he got from his hive, the freer his breath came, and the clearer his vision. He shivered and walked faster. He pulled his phone from his pocket and opened the mobile Trollian. Luckily, Kurloz’s strange magic trick didn’t seem to affect this device, though just for security he avoided hitting that contact. Instead, he contacted someone much more level-headed and sane.

cheliformGospel began trolling genetrixAbiogeneticist  
CG: P9rrim.  
CG: Are y9u awake?  


He dropped his hand to his side. She would probably answer in a little bit. It was a little bit early for her to be up yet, he guessed. Her sporadic and half-diurnal schedule confounded him, and probably her too.

He stepped over a grub husk. Porrim told him once that when the wind blew through them, it sometimes sounded like flutes. He couldn’t imagine that, but she told him it sounded quite pleasant, and he trusted her.

As if she knew that he was thinking of her, Kankri’s phone buzzed in his palm. He whipped it up so quickly he almost tripped.

GA: Yes, I am. Yo+u, ho+wever, sho+uld no+t be.  
GA: It's nearly sunrise, what are yo+u do+ing awake?  


He rolled his eyes. This was not the time for Porrim’s fussy ways.

CG: Did she tell you a69ut Meulin?  
GA: Who+?  
CG: Arryss, 9f c9urse.  
GA: No+, we haven't had a chance to+ talk.  
CG: She's c9mpletely deaf.  
GA: Arryss???  
CG: Meulin. Arryss 6elieves that whatever caused the trauma t9 her sp9nge cl9ts caused en9ugh damage t9 6urst them. I t9ld her n9t t9, 6ut she descri6ed it quite vividly. IF y9u like, I'm sure she'd 6e happy t9 recall the tale.  
GA: O+h...  
GA: O+h no+, that's awful.  
CG: Y9u're telling me. She's 6een crying in my respite6l9ck f9r the past eight h9urs.  
GA: That's  
GA: That's awful, Kanny. At the very least I'm glad she's no+t alo+ne. I wo+uld hate to+ think o+f her dealing with this all by herself in the fields. Who+ kno+ws what she was even do+ing this far o+ut.  
GA: Speaking o+f, have yo+u go+tten aho+ld o+f Kurlo+z? I can’t seem to+ get him to+ respo+nd. I actually can’t even get Trollian to open a chat with him.  
CG: N9. He seems t9 have placed s9me kind 9f curse 9n my huskt9p, h9wever, s9 I think it is safe t9 say that, alive 9r dead, he was very likely inv9lved in Meulin's accident, 9r at the very least kn9ws 9f it.  
CG: I am n9t immedaitely c9ncerned with that right n9w.  
GA: Yo+u're no+t.  
CG: My primary c9ncern is the m9ment is what we're g9ing t9 d9 with Meulin.  
GA: We.  
CG: Yes. I'm sure she will 6e una6le t9 return h9me right away, assuming she even kn9ws where her h9me is fr9m here. I didn't even kn9w she lived anywhere near me, s9 I'll 6e una6le t9 help with that eventual navigati9nal adventure. I've g9t en9ugh medicine t9 last at least a m9nth, 9r s9 I've 6een t9ld, s9 y9u sh9uld 6e fine 9n that fr9nt.  
GA: Wait, what?  


Uh…

CG: What?  
GA: What the hell do+es that mean, "yo+u sho+uld be fine o+n that fro+nt"?  
CG: I mean y9u sh9uldn't run 9ut 9f medicine, and if y9u d9, I'm sure y9u can ask Arryss f9r m9re. She is y9ur friend, after all.  
GA: What are yo+u talking about?  
CG: F9r Meulin. While she is staying with y9u, y9u will have t9 administer her medicine in careful d9ses. I have them written d9wn, th9ugh I h9pe y9u have m9re luck reading Arryss's handwriting than I did. It's c9mpletely inc9mprehensi6le t9 me.  
GA: Kankri, Meulin is no+t styaing with me.  
CG: D9n't 6e ridicul9us. Wh9 else w9uld she stay with? Where can she g9?  
CG: Y9u are the 96vi9us ch9ice here.  
CG: 96vi9usly.  
GA: Don't "o+bvio+usly" me! What part of this is o+bvio+us? I can't take Meulin in!  
GA: Is that why yo+u called me in the first place? So+ yo+u co+uld sho+ve her o+ff o+n me as so+o+n as things go+t difficult?  
CG: I  
CG: I think we must have s9me kind 9f misunderstanding.  
GA: I think we must.  


He stopped walking. He couldn’t walk and talk, not when this conversation was definitely not going the way he’d planned.

CG: I w9uld n9t have enlisted y9ur help in this matter if I did n9t have the fullest faith in y9ur a6ility t9 handle things.  
CG: I th9ught y9u were fully aware 9f my intenti9ns regarding Meulin.  
GA: Yo+ur intentio+ns to+ abando+n her.  
CG: Well, when y9u put it that way, it s9unds d9wnright cruel, and n9t at all in the spirit 9f what I am g9ing f9r.  
CG: 6ut in the spirit 9f simplicity, yes.  
CG: Th9se intenti9ns.  
GA: I canno+t believe this.  
GA: Kankri, Meulin CANNO+T CO+ME TO+ ME. This is literally the last place o+n Befo+rus that she wo+uld be safe.  
GA: If any o+f The Matriarchs fo+und o+ut, she'd be culled in an instant.  
CG: I'm c9nfident in y9ur a6ility t9 keep her safe.  
GA: Kankri.  
GA: I canno+t keep Meulin safe AND do+ my jo+b.  
GA: Plus, aren't YO+U the o+bvio+us cho+ice here?  
CG: Me? Why w9uld I take her in?  
GA: O+ther than yo+ur six sweeps o+f experience avo+iding getting culled? O+ther than yo+ur safe, remo+te lo+catio+n where whatever did this to+ her has a very small chance o+f finding her again? And o+ther than the fact that, fo+r whatever reaso+n, she so+ught YO+U o+ut in the first place?  
CG: 9ther than all th9se reas9ns, yes.  
GA: O+h my go+d Kankri.  
GA: Plus, wo+uldn't yo+u be the better perso+n to+ help her figure o+ut ho+w to+ adapt? Given that yo+u're...  
CG: I really d9n't think I'm equipped f9r this kind 9f thing, P9rrim. If I was, I w9uldn't have called y9u. At first, I was sure we c9uld clean her up and get her 6ack 9n her way 6y sund9wn, 6ut n9w that this has ev9lved int9 a m9re pr96lematic situati9n, I think y9ur inv9lvement is crucial.  
GA: Yo+u kno+w...  
CG: Given that I'm what?  
GA: Deaf?  
CG: P9rrim.  
CG: I'm hard 9f hearing. There is a difference.  
CG: Meulin is c9mpletely deaf. She cann9t and will n9t ever 6e a6le t9 hear any n9ise, n9 matter the level. I, 9n the 9ther hand, am perfectly capa6le 9f hearing things. I just cann9t make them 9ut m9st 9f the time.  
GA: Do+ no+t start talking semantics right no+w.  
GA: Yo+u kno+w what it's like, is what I'm saying. Yo+u kno+w so+me o+f what she's go+ing thro+ugh. Yo+u can help her find ways to+ blend in so+ she wo+n't get culled the first time she decides she wants to+ meet a friend fo+r dinner. Yo+u can teach her to+ sign.  
CG: Y9u kn9w h9w t9 sign!  
GA: I LEARNED IT FO+R YO+U!!  
GA: I swear, Kankri, fo+r so+meo+ne who+ claims to+ care abo+ut the well-being o+f all tro+lls, yo+u sure can be a shithead.  
CG: I am interested in her well-6eing, P9rrim. Her well-6eing n9t crying in my 6l9ck f9r eight h9urs and drinking all my tea. It's ann9ying.  
GA: Yo+u po+o+r grub.  
GA: Listen, if the o+nly reaso+n yo+u tro+lled me was to+ try and pawn Meulin o+ff o+n me, I'm blo+cking yo+u.   
CG: D9n't y9u dare!  


He took a deep breath. This wasn’t going as planned. He’d come out here to calm himself down, but now anxiety was coming back, and annoyance and anger and all kinds of things that made his digestion sac wiggle and his throat close up.

The first sun had risen. Luckily, his body had wandered on autopilot and he’d found one of his little hidey-holes, a cluster of rocks arranged just so that he could sit inside comfortably. He found a little shelf high enough up that he could see anyone or anything that could come up to ambush him, and then proceeded to pay completely and total attention to the phone in his hand.

CG: P9rrim.  
CG: P9rrim. Listen.  
CG: I am extremly deeply unspeaka6ly unc9mf9rta6le taking care 9f Meulin. I d9n't like having pe9ple in my space and I d9n't like pe9ple eating my f99d and I d9n't like having c9nversati9ns with pe9ple and I d9n't like sharing my 6ED with s9me9ne!!  
GA: Get o+ver it.  
CG: ARGH!!  
CG: Y9u are n9t listening t9 me!  
GA: I AM listening! I'm listening to+ yo+ being a whiny wiggler who+'s to+o+ co+ddled and spo+iled to+ do+ the right thing and step o+ut o+f his co+mfo+rt zo+ne fo+r the sake o+f a friend who+ o+bvio+usly trusted him eno+ugh to+ reach o+ut fo+r his help in the first place!  
CG: There is n9 need t9 get rude!  
CG: And Y9U try n9t 6eing a little 6it c9ddled with a lusus like mine!  
CG: He's pr96a6ly 6ack at my hive dr9wning Meulin in c9ncillat9ry fish cakes as we speak!  
GA: Yo+u're no+t even at yo+ur HIVE????  
GA: KANKRI VANTAS!!!!  
CG: D9n't sh9ut at me!!!  
GA: Yo+u left Meulin ALO+NE????  
CG: I'm 9n my way 6ack! I just needed a 6reak fr9m all the crying and tea-making!  
CG: Y9u kn9w I am very sensitive t9 the the em9ti9nal theatrics 9f 9thers. I left 9n the verge 9f a 6reakd9wn myself, and I'm sure the tw9 9f us crying and curling up in little 6alls 9f despair w9uld 6e helpful to kn9w 9ne. If I c9uld c9nvince y9u, f9r 9nce in the c9urse 9f 9ur l9ng friendship, t9 take that int9 acc9unt? Seeing 9thers in such vulnera6le states is highly unc9mf9rta6le and 6orderline triggering f9r me. Y9u kn9w I have little t9 n9 experience with that kind 9f thing, and y9u kn9w I have always 6een awkward with that kind 9f thing, and y9u kn9w that it in n9 way means I d9n't CARE a69ut Meulin. There are s9me tr9lls wh9 are simply n9t as naturally inclined t9 caring f9r 9thers are, say, a jade w9uld 6e!  
GA: O+h my go+d yo+u po+o+r little grub.  
CG: P9rrim, st9p it.  
GA: Kankri, listen to+ me. As “bad” as yo+u seem to+ think yo+u deserve to+ feel right no+w, please try and think abo+ut Meulin. Try to+ think abo+ut SO+MEO+NE besides yo+urself fo+r a few weeks.  
CG: A few WEEKS?  
GA: Kankri.  
GA: As impo+rtant as yo+u seem to+ what yo+u’re feeling right no+w is  
GA: Meulin is the o+ne who+ has been mysterio+usly attacked and co+mpletely DEAFENED, who+’s lo+st her matesprit, who+ is far fro+m ho+me and no+w co+mpletely alo+ne because yo+u decided that thro+wing yo+ur little temper tantrum was mo+re impo+rtant than her well-being.  
GA: Yo+u, o+f co+urse, are perfectly within yo+ur rights to feel anxio+us and uneasy ho+wever. Yo+u need to+ put aside this petty allergy to+ being a decent perso+n. Just because yo+u’re feeling do+wn abo+ut yo+urself do+esn’t mean yo+u get to+ turn away friends in need.  
CG: Y9u are 6eing ridicul9us and dramatic.  
GA: I'M the o+ne who+'s being ridiculo+us.  
CG: Yes.  
CG: In all seri9usness, P9rrim, I really d9n't think I'm her 6est 9pti9n.  
GA: Kankri, no+t o+nly are yo+u her best o+ptio+n, yo+u are her o+nly o+ptio+n.  
GA: This co+nversatio+n is over.  
GA: If yo+u tro+ll me again and say anything o+ther than 'Po+rrim Maryam, yo+u were right all alo+ng and I'm a stupid crying wiggler who+ do+esn't kno+w what he's do+ing and also+ Meulin's do+ing great at my hive' then I am blo+cking yo+u so+ fast yo+u'll get whiplash.  
genetrixAbiogeneticist blocked cheliformGospel.  


Kankri stared dumbly down at his shell phone. That…had not gone that way he had imagined. Why did Porrim have to be so ridiculously _pushy_ about things? Didn’t she understand that this kind of emotional situations were everything he strove to avoid? It had tinges of romantic implication and emotional intimacy and all those kinds of things that required a type of finesse and tact he lacked.

He pulled his knees to his chest and pressed his closed eyelids against his kneecaps until he felt the pressure in his brain. This was not going well.

He stayed that way for a long time, until the sunlight started to make him dizzy. He uncurled himself from his pity ball, looked around quickly to make sure no lusii had wandered  close, pulled his hood far down over his face, and made his way home.

He hadn’t wandered that far. The second sun was just rising when Kankri got back. He accidentally put away his hood, and briefly wrestled with his sylladex to try and retrieve it, but when it became evident that it was forthcoming, he gave up and just stumbled to his respiteblock. The second he’d come inside, exhaustion had hit him like a steam-powered eight-wheeled device. Crabdad was nowhere to be seen, but the air smelled fishy enough that Kankri could guess what he’d been up to.  His phone buzzed, and he checked it absently; Porrim had unblocked him, but repeated her sentiments from earlier. It was probably best not to wish her a good morning, then. She always took things like that seriously.

The door was unlocked and ajar, and he nearly shattered the teacup left on the threshold with his foot. He didn’t give it a second glance, or even really a proper first glance. He was not dealing with that right now. He didn’t consider changing pants before dropping into bed. He didn’t spare a thought to the tension of sleeping beside someone else. He was too tired to care. He didn’t bother getting under the blankets. He just laid himself out and was asleep in minutes.

He dreamed that he was sailing over a multi-colored sea, trying to sleep while a hurricane raged. Meulin was there, tugging at his sleeve, begging him to pacify the storm. He grumbled his complaints and he shook his fist at the sky, but he obliged her and shooshed the wind and papped the waves, and they sailed peacefully on to their destination.

It couldn’t have been more than a few hours after falling into bed that Kankri woke up, disoriented and still half-dreaming. Opening his eyes was almost painful, and every nerve in his body protested being awake.

He wasn’t sure, right away, what had woken him up, but whatever it was, it was going to get an earful. Or a handful. Whichever he felt like giving. Meulin wasn’t touching him, and Crabdad hadn’t sounded the alarm, and as far as he remembered his dreams had been pleasant. He wasn’t unused to waking up in the middle of the night, but usually the reason for his interrupted sleep became apparent quickly. He took slow stock of his surroundings. Nothing seemed amiss.

Huffing quietly in annoyance, he closed his eyes and tried to will himself back to sleep.

Several long moments passed. Everything was quiet and still. Kankri didn’t sleep. Something was digging at the back of his mind, trying to tug his attention towards…towards _something_.

It felt like hours before he gave up and opened his eyes again.

It was still dark out. The windows were flung open and the curtains were pulled back, and the moonlight brightened the room, resembling sunlight just enough to make him drowsy. He was laying on his side, facing the door, Meulin a warm afterthought at his back.

Meulin…who was still in bed. Hours into the night.

Slowly, very slowly, so as not to disturb her, Kankri shifted very carefully onto his back, and turned his head.

Meulin wasn’t asleep. That was immediately obvious. Her shoulders were too tense, her posture too controlled. Her back was to him and she had scooted as far away as she could without falling off the bed, curled up in a ball in an attempt to stifle the fact that she was shaking rather violently.

Panic rose up in Kankri’s throat, and he wondered in panic if he could get to the husktop and get Arryss in time for her to be able to do anything. Meulin had complained earlier of a slight headache, and Arryss had mentioned that one of the medications could cause crippling migraines, but he couldn’t remember now which one it was.

He turned over on his side, watching Meulin with wide eyes as he tried to figure out whether there was anything he could do. His hands were pressed tightly against his chest, trying valiantly to keep his beating pumper from leaping from his chest. He opened his mouth to call out to her, and closed it with a painful snap. Of _course_ that wouldn’t work.

He realized with a violent start that she wasn’t just _shaking_. She was _crying_.

Kankri started at the realization, and awkwardness settled heavily in his chest. He wasn’t used to sharing his bed, never mind sharing it with someone who was _crying_. This wasn’t the kind of things that movies could possibly prepare you for. They all presented this kind of thing as instinctual and inherent, as if every troll was hardwired with the knowledge of how to comfort others.

Meulin’s shoulders heaved with notable gusto, and brought Kankri’s attention back to her. She was crying too quietly for him to hear, which meant she was probably making an effort to be as quiet as possible. She didn’t _want_ him to notice. She hadn’t noticed him moving around yet, and probably thought he was still asleep.

He could just roll back over, pretend to be asleep, and let her keep what little of her dignity she had left. She would probably thank him for doing so, if he ever felt the need to tell her. Sparing her the shame of his having to enduring yet another spell of hysterical tears was a mercy, he was sure. Porrim’s words briefly flashed through his mind…but surely it was just chance that had dumped her at his door. She had just made her way to the nearest sign of life, and had seen his extremely colorful and hard to miss hive in the middle of the lusus fields. So she had no reason to expect or welcome his assistance. Besides, hadn’t she made it clear earlier that she didn’t want him to bear witness to her moments of emotional frailty? Yes, yes she had. It would be far better for both of them if Kankri just laid back on his side and closed his eyes and tried to get back to sleep.

There. That was settled then.

Kankri reached out, very slowly, and laid his hand gently on Meulin’s shoulder.

She stilled instantly, and he regretted almost as instantly.

She didn’t move; as far as he could tell, she didn’t even breathe. He huffed indignantly. Offer a distressed friend some comfort in an exhausted fugue and they respond by completely ignoring you. How perfectly typical.

He tugged at her shoulder not quite gently until she rolled over onto her back. She kept her head turned away from him until his grip on her tightened ever so much, a subtle threat he barely understood enough to be making.

Kankri’s throat felt tight and his digestive system was doing flips. She looked _awful_. Her lips were swollen (she had been biting them, he thought, which was a very harmful habit if unchecked), and her eyes were green and puffy from crying. She sniffled, and he was sure that if he could hear it, his pity bladder would practically explode at the no doubt very pathetic sound.

“Are you alright?” he asked, and immediately kicked himself.

She didn’t seem too offended by his slip-up, though, and seemed to guess at what he was asking. Her mouth moved, but as far as he could figure, she didn’t form actual _words_. She tried to turn her face away again, burying it in the pillow instead of facing him. Kankri’s stomach clenched (Crabdad had _just_ washed those pillowcases) and he tugged at her shoulder again. She turned her head to look at him, face scrunched up as if she was waiting for him to start yelling at her or something.

He didn’t yell at her. He just stared at her.

What in the name of the Empress was he _doing_? He hadn’t the faintest idea how to handle a situation like this. Kankri’s social circle was small and, generally speaking, emotionally stable. Every part that _wasn’t_ emotionally stable had a moirail to take care of things, and whenever things got too pale, he immediately and discretely vacated the area. That kind of thing was _private_. He had no idea how comforting generally went outside of, well…what he saw in movies.

Meulin sniffled again, twitching beneath his hand, and the motion brought Kankri crashing, unfortunately, back to the present.

He pulled on Meulin’s shoulder gentler now. She resisted at first, but the glare on his face cut that nonsense short. He shifted closer and very very _carefully_ pulled her closer. She got the message quickly, and scooted closer to him, burying her face without any further invitation into his collar. Her brow collided painfully with his shoulder, but his protest was overruled by the fact that she immediately started crying again. He wiggled around gracelessly until one of his arms was free and very carefully laid it over her side so that he could pat at her shoulder blade gently.

“There, there,” he warbled, and she choked against his chest.

Her hands were bunched up in the thin material of his shirt, and he could feel the dampness of her tears on his skin. She shifted, pressing the length of her body against his, and he stiffened. She gave no signs of leaning away, or calming herself down, but it was a long time before Kankri relaxed.

He laid his arm more casually across her, pulling her closer in a physically awkward half-hug. After a few breaths, she relaxed into him, shuffling closer (if that was possible at this point…they were getting _very_ intimate), one arm sliding across his waist and grasping his shirt at the shoulder. She wasn’t crying as hard now, but showed no signs of wanting to pull away.

He stroked her shoulder carefully and hummed quietly. She couldn’t hear him, but she could probably feel it in his chest. It was what Crabdad used to for him when he was upset and managed to catch his lusus before he vanished. He’d learned to associate the gentle vibrations with comfort and safety, and it was all he could think to offer Meulin.

He didn’t intend to, but…he was still so exhausted. The sun had sapped his strength and he’d been awake for a whole night and day with nothing but tea to keep him going, and Meulin was warm and comfortable, albeit still a bit distraught. Kankri rested his chin against the top of her head, and felt himself start to drift off. In minutes, he went slack, cheek resting against her horn, and they slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> genetrixAbiogeneticist  
>  genetrix _(noun gen·e·trix \ˈjenə‧(ˌ)triks\\)_ \- mother or female ancestor  
>  abiogeneticist \- from abiogenesis, meaning the spontaneous creation of life or matter from nothing
> 
> Wait tilll you see Meulin's handle...
> 
> Also, I would like to dedicate this moment:
> 
> GA: Plus, wo+uldn't yo+u be the better perso+n to+ help her figure o+ut ho+w to+ adapt? Given that yo+u're...  
>  CG: I really d9n't think I'm equipped f9r this kind 9f thing, P9rrim. If I was, I w9uldn't have called y9u. At first, I was sure we c9uld clean her up and get her 6ack 9n her way 6y sund9wn, 6ut n9w that this has ev9lved int9 a m9re pr96lematic situati9n, I think y9ur inv9lvement is crucial.  
>  GA: Yo+u kno+w...  
>  CG: Given that I'm what?  
> 
> 
> to every partner I've ever had on MSPARP who wouldn't fucking wait for me to finish my goddamn responses before chattering on. Let Kankri talk, dammit.
> 
> After a lot of thought and like so many months, I've decided to just end this story here! It really is just kind of meant to be a place to for me to dump headcanons, and I think the reason I've been struggling so much to write more is because more just wasn't meant to be written! Now that this is done, I can focus on other projects without guilt, like the rest of my Dancestors Headcanon Jams (of which there are _many_. I'll definitely come back to edit this and Meulin and Kankri may have more adventures later, but I don't think I'll be posting any more chapters in this particular work!

**Author's Note:**

> Headcanons featured in this work:
> 
>   * Kankri (and Karkat!) is hard of hearing
>   * Porrim's pale feelings for Kankri are mostly unrequited, and occasionally their relationships run a little black
>   * Kankri and Meulin have pale feelings for one another, which they dance around in typical Vantas fashion
>   * Kankri and Mituna were good friends, but Shenanigans™ which I may or may not write conspired for Kankri to be an asshole and end it
>   * Beforan trolls don't need/use sopor slime
>   * Kankri uses chastity modus (though looking at earlier chapters, I obviously had no idea how chastity modus works
>   * Kankri's vow of celibacy was made shortly either _after_ he entered the Game or literally _just_ before. Up until that point, his charming personality kept the relationships at bay anyway.
>   * The Beforan trolls started their Sgrub game when they were seven sweeps old (about fifteen human years) (Meulin was stated to have been deafened "well before" the session began. As Porrim states in Part 3 of this fic, the trolls are about six sweeps old here, so about as old as the Beta trolls when we first met them)
>   * (Not necessarily a headcanon that is OVERTLY dominant in the story, but still worth mentioning...) Trolls mature, mentally and emotionally, faster than humans. Alternian trolls, however, tend to mature faster than their Beforan counterparts
> 



End file.
